[ricardobeat]

Why would a user ever opt-in to something that has zero immediate benefit? And for authors, that would be the same as permanently disabling tracking, nobody would adopt it. It’s the worst possible scenario.

What we should work towards is privacy-conscious tracking, used sparingly only for monitoring critical pieces of the software and not all user actions. Flag/reject software that violates this. Then there is no need to opt-out for privacy concerns.

[Rygian]

Why would a developer be allowed to enable something that has zero immediate benefit for the user, yet erodes at the user's privacy?

Privacy-conscious tracking begins with asking for permission to disclose my personal information (eg. my IP address), before anything ever goes on the wire.

[ricardobeat]

That’s not what I meant by privacy conscious.

They don’t need your IP address to track usage or health metrics. Most of it can be collected anonymously. We should encourage software to simply not collect personal information at all.

[xpressvideoz]

Because I want the apps I use daily to improve? Of course I recognize I'm in the minority.

[arp242]

I think you're probably not. If you explain the details to random people on the street then I bet that a majority would probably be fine with it.

I don't even like to use the word "tracking" any more as it's lost all meaning. Not all "tracking" is identical: some is highly problematic, some is a little bit problematic, some is just fine. When you lose light of any and all nuance and difference then the conversation becomes pointless.

It's just that these topics attract people on horses so high they need spacesuits asserting all sort of things in the absolute that it appears you're in the minority.